Comment by godelski
1 day ago
> There is no benefit to having people be able to draw the flag accurately. A flag has two purposes:
The purposes you mention are much more easily achieved by being simple to draw.
Yes, it is something "someone is arguing" but it's congruent with general design principles you will see in most domains.
> a Spaniard claim her flag was easy to draw. She meant that it's easy to draw if you don't bother to draw the coat of arms.
She's not exactly wrong. Many countries use variants of flags for different uses. In the case of Spain[0] the civil flag does not have the coat of arms.
For a similar case, see the flag of Germany[1], Austria[2], Peru[3], Finland[4], Italy[5], and need I go on?
I don't think you should be ashamed for not knowing, but it's worth recognizing how easy it is to miscommunicate because different inherent assumptions are being made. In your case it is unsurprising that there is this disagreement because she sees the civil flag commonly and you don't, so it seems like a cop-out to you while it is pretty reasonable for her. There's surprisingly (annoyingly) a lot of depth to seemingly simple things.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Spain
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Germany
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Austria
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Peru
> The purposes you mention are much more easily achieved by being simple to draw.
No, that is not true for either purpose. Being simple to draw is a negative in both cases:
(1) Things that are simple to draw can be easy to recognize, but things that are complex are easier to recognize.
(2) Things that are simple to draw are never visually impressive.
And the flags that are easy to draw are so simple that it's interfering with the ability to recognize them. The first example there would be Ireland vs the Ivory Coast:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Ireland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Ivory_Coast
Another common confusion is Russia vs France, though in that case someone who needs to be able to tell the difference won't have trouble:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_France
> For a similar case, see the flag of Germany[1], Austria[2], Peru[3], Finland[4], Italy[5], and need I go on?
Go on? Try beginning first. Every single one of those links presents the flag without the coat of arms as a default and the flag with the coat of arms as a special case.